[FEATURE] Flag and config file setting for disabling token usage when thinking/cogitating/etc.

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 2, 2026 by riot-shawndalf Closed May 2, 2026

Preflight Checklist

  • [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
  • [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

When recording videos/screencasts in claude code with asciinema or vhs or whatever terminal tool that makes you happy, when you convert to a gif there is a lovely feature in asciinema agg that lets you skip idle frames (--idle-time-limit 2 for example). Welp, there are not a lot of idle frames when it's constantly Thinking (# tokens used) .

I have created a ~/.claude/settings.recording.json that looks like this:
settings.recording.json
{
"spinnerTipsEnabled": false,
"prefersReducedMotion": true,
"statusLine": {
"type": "command",
"command": ":"
}
}

and then run with claude --settings ~/.claude/settings.recording.json which helps, but I still want to be able to get rid of what is in the brackets after thinking/cogitating/whatever (8 tokens used). OR maybe add a --recording or --movie or --action flag that will do all of the above and a new displayTokenUsage:boolean or something to that effect. Any of the above would be quite helpful, cuz otherwise I'm importing a gif into an editor and manually chopping out idle frames (or trying to get claude to do it, but it's not great at picking what is and isn't idle frames).

Proposed Solution

Please add a displayTokenUsage in the config to disable the token usage in brackets (# tokens used)
Or --displayTokenUsage=false to command line
Bonus points for --recording or --movie that does the displayTokenUsage=false,spinnerTipsEnabled=false,prefersReducedMotion=true all in 1 shot.
This is for screen recording.

Keep up the awesome work friends!

Alternative Solutions

_No response_

Priority

Low - Nice to have

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

claude --recording

Screen recording mode enabled, not showing spinners, disabling token usage, reduced motion.

Additional Context

_No response_

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